OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Benchmarking Large Language Models for Log Analysis, Security, and Interpretation
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2023
Year: 2023

Large Language Models (LLM) continue to demonstrate their utility in a variety of emergent capabilities in different fields. An area that could benefit from effective language understanding in cybersecurity is the analysis of log files. This work explores LLMs with different architectures (BERT, RoBERTa, DistilRoBERTa, GPT-2, and GPT-Neo) that are benchmarked for their capacity to better analyze application and system log files for security. Specifically, 60 fine-tuned language models for log analysis are deployed and benchmarked. The resulting models demonstrate that they can be used to perform log analysis effectively with fine-tuning being particularly important for appropriate domain adaptation to specific log types. The best-performing fine-tuned sequence classification model (DistilRoBERTa) outperforms the current state-of-the-art; with an average F1-Score of 0.998 across six datasets from both web application and system log sources. To achieve this, we propose and implement a new experimentation pipeline (LLM4Sec) which leverages LLMs for log analysis experimentation, evaluation, and analysis.
GaussianEditor: Swift and Controllable 3D Editing with Gaussian Splatting
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

3D editing plays a crucial role in many areas such as gaming and virtual reality. Traditional 3D editing methods, which rely on representations like meshes and point clouds, often fall short in realistically depicting complex scenes. On the other hand, methods based on implicit 3D representations, like Neural Radiance Field (NeRF), render complex scenes effectively but suffer from slow processing speeds and limited control over specific scene areas. In response to these challenges, our paper presents GaussianEditor, an innovative and efficient 3D editing algorithm based on Gaussian Splatting (GS), a novel 3D representation. GaussianEditor enhances precision and control in editing through our proposed Gaussian semantic tracing, which traces the editing target throughout the training process. Additionally, we propose Hierarchical Gaussian splatting (HGS) to achieve stabilized and fine results under stochastic generative guidance from 2D diffusion models. We also develop editing strategies for efficient object removal and integration, a challenging task for existing methods. Our comprehensive experiments demonstrate GaussianEditor's superior control, efficacy, and rapid performance, marking a significant advancement in 3D editing. Project Page: https://buaacyw.github.io/gaussian-editor/
Digital Twin-Native AI-Driven Service Architecture for Industrial Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2023
Year: 2023

The dramatic increase in the connectivity demand results in an excessive amount of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. To meet the management needs of these large-scale networks, such as accurate monitoring and learning capabilities, Digital Twin (DT) is the key enabler. However, current attempts regarding DT implementations remain insufficient due to the perpetual connectivity requirements of IoT networks. Furthermore, the sensor data streaming in IoT networks cause higher processing time than traditional methods. In addition to these, the current intelligent mechanisms cannot perform well due to the spatiotemporal changes in the implemented IoT network scenario. To handle these challenges, we propose a DT-native AI-driven service architecture in support of the concept of IoT networks. Within the proposed DT-native architecture, we implement a TCP-based data flow pipeline and a Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based learner model. We apply the proposed architecture to one of the broad concepts of IoT networks, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV). We measure the efficiency of our proposed architecture and note ~30% processing time-saving thanks to the TCP-based data flow pipeline. Moreover, we test the performance of the learner model by applying several learning rate combinations for actor and critic networks and highlight the most successive model.
Neural Style Transfer for Computer Games
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

Neural Style Transfer (NST) research has been applied to images, videos, 3D meshes and radiance fields, but its application to 3D computer games remains relatively unexplored. Whilst image and video NST systems can be used as a post-processing effect for a computer game, this results in undesired artefacts and diminished post-processing effects. Here, we present an approach for injecting depth-aware NST as part of the 3D rendering pipeline. Qualitative and quantitative experiments are used to validate our in-game stylisation framework. We demonstrate temporally consistent results of artistically stylised game scenes, outperforming state-of-the-art image and video NST methods.
New Bounds on the Local and Global Edge-length Ratio of Planar Graphs
Venue: arXiv cs.CG 2023
Year: 2023

The \emph{local edge-length ratio} of a planar straight-line drawing $Γ$ is the largest ratio between the lengths of any pair of edges of $Γ$ that share a common vertex. The \emph{global edge-length ratio} of $Γ$ is the largest ratio between the lengths of any pair of edges of $Γ$. The local (global) edge-length ratio of a planar graph is the infimum over all local (global) edge-length ratios of its planar straight-line drawings. We show that there exist planar graphs with $n$ vertices whose local edge-length ratio is $Ω(\sqrt{n})$. We then show a technique to establish upper bounds on the global (and hence local) edge-length ratio of planar graphs and~apply~it to Halin graphs and to other families of graphs having outerplanarity two.
Data-driven recommendations for enhancing real-time natural hazard warnings, communication, and response
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

The effectiveness and adequacy of natural hazard warnings hinges on the availability of data and its transformation into actionable knowledge for the public. Real-time warning communication and emergency response therefore need to be evaluated from a data science perspective. However, there are currently gaps between established data science best practices and their application in supporting natural hazard warnings. This Perspective reviews existing data-driven approaches that underpin real-time warning communication and emergency response, highlighting limitations in hazard and impact forecasts. Four main themes for enhancing warnings are emphasised: (i) applying best-practice principles in visualising hazard forecasts, (ii) data opportunities for more effective impact forecasts, (iii) utilising data for more localised forecasts, and (iv) improving data-driven decision-making using uncertainty. Motivating examples are provided from the extensive flooding experienced in Australia in 2022. This Perspective shows the capacity for improving the efficacy of natural hazard warnings using data science, and the collaborative potential between the data science and natural hazards communities.
Causal Models Applied to the Patterns of Human Migration due to Climate Change
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

The impacts of mass migration, such as crisis induced by climate change, extend beyond environmental concerns and can greatly affect social infrastructure and public services, such as education, healthcare, and security. These crises exacerbate certain elements like cultural barriers, and discrimination by amplifying the challenges faced by these affected communities. This paper proposes an innovative approach to address migration crises in the context of crisis management through a combination of modeling and imbalance assessment tools. By employing deep learning for forecasting and integrating causal reasoning via Bayesian networks, this methodology enables the evaluation of imbalances and risks in the socio-technological landscape, providing crucial insights for informed decision-making. Through this framework, critical systems can be analyzed to understand how fluctuations in migration levels may impact them, facilitating effective crisis governance strategies.
Evolutionary City: Towards a Flexible, Agile and Symbiotic System
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

Urban growth sometimes leads to rigid infrastructure that struggles to adapt to changing demand. This paper introduces a novel approach, aiming to enable cities to evolve and respond more effectively to such dynamic demand. It identifies the limitations arising from the complexity and inflexibility of existing urban systems. A framework is presented for enhancing the city's adaptability perception through advanced sensing technologies, conducting parallel simulation via graph-based techniques, and facilitating autonomous decision-making across domains through decentralized and autonomous organization and operation. Notably, a symbiotic mechanism is employed to implement these technologies practically, thereby making urban management more agile and responsive. In the case study, we explore how this approach can optimize traffic flow by adjusting lane allocations. This case not only enhances traffic efficiency but also reduces emissions. The proposed evolutionary city offers a new perspective on sustainable urban development, highliting the importance of integrated intelligence within urban systems.
AI for All: Operationalising Diversity and Inclusion Requirements for AI Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) permeates many aspects of society, it brings numerous advantages while at the same time raising ethical concerns and potential risks, such as perpetuating inequalities through biased or discriminatory decision-making. To develop AI systems that cater for the needs of diverse users and uphold ethical values, it is essential to consider and integrate diversity and inclusion (D&I) principles throughout AI development and deployment. Requirements engineering (RE) is a fundamental process in developing software systems by eliciting and specifying relevant needs from diverse stakeholders. This research aims to address the lack of research and practice on how to elicit and capture D&I requirements for AI systems. We have conducted comprehensive data collection and synthesis from the literature review to extract requirements themes related to D&I in AI. We have proposed a tailored user story template to capture D&I requirements and conducted focus group exercises to use the themes and user story template in writing D&I requirements for two example AI systems. Additionally, we have investigated the capability of our solution by generating synthetic D&I requirements captured in user stories with the help of a Large Language Model.
Knowledge Tracing Challenge: Optimal Activity Sequencing for Students
Venue: arXiv cs.CY 2023
Year: 2023

Knowledge tracing is a method used in education to assess and track the acquisition of knowledge by individual learners. It involves using a variety of techniques, such as quizzes, tests, and other forms of assessment, to determine what a learner knows and does not know about a particular subject. The goal of knowledge tracing is to identify gaps in understanding and provide targeted instruction to help learners improve their understanding and retention of material. This can be particularly useful in situations where learners are working at their own pace, such as in online learning environments. By providing regular feedback and adjusting instruction based on individual needs, knowledge tracing can help learners make more efficient progress and achieve better outcomes. Effectively solving the KT problem would unlock the potential of computer-aided education applications such as intelligent tutoring systems, curriculum learning, and learning materials recommendations. In this paper, we will present the results of the implementation of two Knowledge Tracing algorithms on a newly released dataset as part of the AAAI2023 Global Knowledge Tracing Challenge.
Zero-Shot Question Answering over Financial Documents using Large Language Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

We introduce a large language model (LLM) based approach to answer complex questions requiring multi-hop numerical reasoning over financial reports. While LLMs have exhibited remarkable performance on various natural language and reasoning tasks, complex reasoning problems often rely on few-shot prompts that require carefully crafted examples. In contrast, our approach uses novel zero-shot prompts that guide the LLM to encode the required reasoning into a Python program or a domain specific language. The generated program is then executed by a program interpreter, thus mitigating the limitations of LLM in performing accurate arithmetic calculations. We evaluate the proposed approach on three financial datasets using some of the recently developed generative pretrained transformer (GPT) models and perform comparisons with various zero-shot baselines. The experimental results demonstrate that our approach significantly improves the accuracy for all the LLMs over their respective baselines. We provide a detailed analysis of the results, generating insights to support our findings. The success of our approach demonstrates the enormous potential to extract complex domain specific numerical reasoning by designing zero-shot prompts to effectively exploit the knowledge embedded in LLMs.
App for Resume-Based Job Matching with Speech Interviews and Grammar Analysis: A Review
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2023
Year: 2023

Through the advancement in natural language processing (NLP), specifically in speech recognition, fully automated complex systems functioning on voice input have started proliferating in areas such as home automation. These systems have been termed Automatic Speech Recognition Systems (ASR). In this review paper, we explore the feasibility of an end-to-end system providing speech and text based natural language processing for job interview preparation as well as recommendation of relevant job postings. We also explore existing recommender-based systems and note their limitations. This literature review would help us identify the approaches and limitations of the various similar use-cases of NLP technology for our upcoming project.
SafeSea: Synthetic Data Generation for Adverse & Low Probability Maritime Conditions
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

High-quality training data is essential for enhancing the robustness of object detection models. Within the maritime domain, obtaining a diverse real image dataset is particularly challenging due to the difficulty of capturing sea images with the presence of maritime objects , especially in stormy conditions. These challenges arise due to resource limitations, in addition to the unpredictable appearance of maritime objects. Nevertheless, acquiring data from stormy conditions is essential for training effective maritime detection models, particularly for search and rescue, where real-world conditions can be unpredictable. In this work, we introduce SafeSea, which is a stepping stone towards transforming actual sea images with various Sea State backgrounds while retaining maritime objects. Compared to existing generative methods such as Stable Diffusion Inpainting~\cite{stableDiffusion}, this approach reduces the time and effort required to create synthetic datasets for training maritime object detection models. The proposed method uses two automated filters to only pass generated images that meet the criteria. In particular, these filters will first classify the sea condition according to its Sea State level and then it will check whether the objects from the input image are still preserved. This method enabled the creation of the SafeSea dataset, offering diverse weather condition backgrounds to supplement the training of maritime models. Lastly, we observed that a maritime object detection model faced challenges in detecting objects in stormy sea backgrounds, emphasizing the impact of weather conditions on detection accuracy. The code, and dataset are available at https://github.com/martin-3240/SafeSea.
cryptoRAN: A review on cryptojacking and ransomware attacks w.r.t. banking industry -- threats, challenges, & problems
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2023
Year: 2023

In the banking industry, ransomware is a well-known threat, but since the beginning of 2022, cryptojacking, an emerging threat is posing a considerable challenge to the banking industry. Ransomware has variants, and the attackers keep changing the nature of these variants. This review paper studies the complex background of these two threats and scrutinizes the actual challenges, and problems that the banking industry and financial institutions face. These threats, though distinct in nature, share commonalities, such as financial motivations and sophisticated techniques. We focus on examining the newly emerged variants of ransomware while we provide a comprehensive idea of cryptojacking and its nature. This paper involves a detailed breakdown of the specific threats posed by cryptojacking and ransomware. It explores the techniques cybercriminals use, the variabilities they look for, and the potential consequences for financial institutions and their customers. This paper also finds out how cybercriminals change their techniques following the security upgrades, and why financial firms including banks need to be proactive about cyber threats. Additionally, this paper reviews the background study of some existing papers, finds the research gaps that need to be addressed, and provides suggestions including a conclusion and future scope on those disputes. Lastly, we introduce a Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) approach for up-to-date cyber threat hunting processes for minimizing both cryptojacking and ransomware attacks in the banking industry.
Exploiting Large Language Models (LLMs) through Deception Techniques and Persuasion Principles
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2023
Year: 2023

With the recent advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT from OpenAI, BARD from Google, Llama2 from Meta, and Claude from Anthropic AI, gain widespread use, ensuring their security and robustness is critical. The widespread use of these language models heavily relies on their reliability and proper usage of this fascinating technology. It is crucial to thoroughly test these models to not only ensure its quality but also possible misuses of such models by potential adversaries for illegal activities such as hacking. This paper presents a novel study focusing on exploitation of such large language models against deceptive interactions. More specifically, the paper leverages widespread and borrows well-known techniques in deception theory to investigate whether these models are susceptible to deceitful interactions. This research aims not only to highlight these risks but also to pave the way for robust countermeasures that enhance the security and integrity of language models in the face of sophisticated social engineering tactics. Through systematic experiments and analysis, we assess their performance in these critical security domains. Our results demonstrate a significant finding in that these large language models are susceptible to deception and social engineering attacks.
How Strong a Kick Should be to Topple Northeastern's Tumbling Robot?
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

Rough terrain locomotion has remained one of the most challenging mobility questions. In 2022, NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program invited US academic institutions to participate NASA's Breakthrough, Innovative \& Game-changing (BIG) Idea competition by proposing novel mobility systems that can negotiate extremely rough terrain, lunar bumpy craters. In this competition, Northeastern University won NASA's top Artemis Award award by proposing an articulated robot tumbler called COBRA (Crater Observing Bio-inspired Rolling Articulator). This report briefly explains the underlying principles that made COBRA successful in competing with other concepts ranging from cable-driven to multi-legged designs from six other participating US institutions.
Measuring Human-Robot Trust with the MDMT (Multi-Dimensional Measure of Trust)
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2023
Year: 2023

We describe the steps of developing the MDMT (Multi-Dimensional Measure of Trust), an intuitive self-report measure of perceived trustworthiness of various agents (human, robot, animal). We summarize the evidence that led to the original four-dimensional form (v1) and to the most recent five-dimensional form (v2). We examine the measure's strengths and limitations and point to further necessary validations.
HyperDID: Hyperspectral Intrinsic Image Decomposition with Deep Feature Embedding
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2023
Year: 2023

The dissection of hyperspectral images into intrinsic components through hyperspectral intrinsic image decomposition (HIID) enhances the interpretability of hyperspectral data, providing a foundation for more accurate classification outcomes. However, the classification performance of HIID is constrained by the model's representational ability. To address this limitation, this study rethinks hyperspectral intrinsic image decomposition for classification tasks by introducing deep feature embedding. The proposed framework, HyperDID, incorporates the Environmental Feature Module (EFM) and Categorical Feature Module (CFM) to extract intrinsic features. Additionally, a Feature Discrimination Module (FDM) is introduced to separate environment-related and category-related features. Experimental results across three commonly used datasets validate the effectiveness of HyperDID in improving hyperspectral image classification performance. This novel approach holds promise for advancing the capabilities of hyperspectral image analysis by leveraging deep feature embedding principles. The implementation of the proposed method could be accessed soon at https://github.com/shendu-sw/HyperDID for the sake of reproducibility.
LLM-Assisted Code Cleaning For Training Accurate Code Generators
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2023
Year: 2023

Natural language to code generation is an important application area of LLMs and has received wide attention from the community. The majority of relevant studies have exclusively concentrated on increasing the quantity and functional correctness of training sets while disregarding other stylistic elements of programs. More recently, data quality has garnered a lot of interest and multiple works have showcased its importance for improving performance. In this work, we investigate data quality for code and find that making the code more structured and readable leads to improved code generation performance of the system. We build a novel data-cleaning pipeline that uses these principles to transform existing programs by 1.) renaming variables, 2.) modularizing and decomposing complex code into smaller helper sub-functions, and 3.) inserting natural-language based plans via LLM based transformations. We evaluate our approach on two challenging algorithmic code generation benchmarks and find that fine-tuning CodeLLaMa-7B on our transformed modularized programs improves the performance by up to 30% compared to fine-tuning on the original dataset. Additionally, we demonstrate improved performance from using a smaller amount of higher-quality data, finding that a model fine-tuned on the entire original dataset is outperformed by a model trained on 15% of our cleaned dataset. Even in comparison to closed-source models, our models outperform the much larger AlphaCoder models.